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KremlinGate

Can he prove one crime? Didn't know NR was a member of the FBI or the Justice Department, or a member of congress. That's why when there's evidence of impropriety, there are investigations. And where often, as here, the target seeks to obstruct the investigation. Which by itself can be a crime.

I was making a point to fact we have lot of smoke but no fire. At the end the day if trump goes to jail or one his underlings(circle around him) go to jail. Or convicted on something, I will be happy to make a public apogoly that I was wrong. Its no shame to admit I am wrong if the facts go agaisnt me. At the end I believe this Russia and fake news thing is hysteria .Its politically moviated rather than anything that is trying to find the truth.

I think Kucinich's comparison with McCarthyism is a bit of a stretch. First off, ideologically speaking, McCarthyism was, for the most part, an attempt to smear the left. I don't think any of the people being targeted by the Democrats in Russiagate qualify in any way as being "the left", and neither does the alleged ringmaster Putin.

Furthermore, McCarthy attacked scores of people all over the place. Whereas as far as I can tell, the number of people under suspicion in Russiagate doesn't tally in at more than a dozen. It's not like Democrats are waving around pieces of paper and claiming to have the names of hundreds of people in the US government who have been working for Putin.

Granted, the historical echoes, faint though they may be, have made for some amusing, if rather strained, comparisons. I saw a right-wing anti-Trump poster on Slate comparing the Donald to Henry A. Wallace, the supposedly pro-Soviet vice-president. I guess that makes Trump's Grab 'Em By The P*ssy interview into the Guru Letters.

For a cautionary take on Russiagate, I thought this piece by Jesse Walker(right-wing, libertarian) was rather useful...

How do you tell a plausible charge from a fevered fantasy? As allegations drip, drip about President Donald Trump’s purported ties with Russia, most news consumers will want to keep an open mind about potential wrongdoing. But they won’t want to get lost in some eternal connect-the-dots game that never forms a coherent and believable picture.

There’s a difference between thinking that Moscow may have hacked the Democratic National Committee and thinking that Moscow actually hacked the election, between thinking the president may have Russian conflicts of interest and thinking he’s a Russian puppet, between the corruptions and deceptions that pop up in politics and the supervillain schemes that pop up in pulp fiction.

Robert Anton Wilson's distinction between an octopus and a plate of spaghetti is especially pertinent, it seems to me.

What does "hacked the election" mean. There's no plausible claim that they hacked the voting machines. But if by hacked he means that their breaking and entering of the DNC files, and subsequent dissemination, did not affect the election, then he's off base. Because it clearly did.

I think the important point in the article was that Russian/US stuff is only one instance. I would imagine that the US has phone banks (outsourced, of course). EDIT Oops I meant to say data interference teams. But just as likely is that any moneyed interest that is fighting a public opinion battle is no doubt playing the game. We need to come up with "are you a bot" strategies ('you say you are from Calgary, who is your favorite Flame?')

“The FBI is planning to create a special section based at its Washington headquarters to co-ordinate its investigation of Russian activities designed to influence the 2016 presidential election,” the Financial Times reports.

“The move, a sign of how seriously the bureau is taking allegations of Russian meddling in American politics, is also aimed at giving FBI director James Comey greater visibility into the investigation’s granular details.”

Actually the article is calling on Trump to arrest whistleblowers in the intelligence community who are using classified information to undermine his presidency. Not his political opponents. He doesn't need to arrest them - he's already beaten them.

Unlike Paul Craig Roberts, I'm a fan of whistleblowers. Also pretty keen about evidence for serious charges, like the president of the US is an agent of a foreign power, or claims that an outgoing president was conducting illegal survellience on a candidate for an opposing political party. Whistleblowers can help with that.

You appear to be front and centre involved with the Fake News industry being perpetuated by Trump & Co

SeekingAPoliticalHome wrote:

I was making a point to fact we have lot of smoke but no fire. At the end the day if trump goes to jail or one his underlings(circle around him) go to jail. Or convicted on something, I will be happy to make a public apogoly that I was wrong. Its no shame to admit I am wrong if the facts go agaisnt me. At the end I believe this Russia and fake news thing is hysteria .Its politically moviated rather than anything that is trying to find the truth.

You appear to be front and centre involved with the Fake News industry being perpetuated by Trump & Co

PS interesting timing of your arrival here at babble

SeekingAPoliticalHome wrote:

I was making a point to fact we have lot of smoke but no fire. At the end the day if trump goes to jail or one his underlings(circle around him) go to jail. Or convicted on something, I will be happy to make a public apogoly that I was wrong. Its no shame to admit I am wrong if the facts go agaisnt me. At the end I believe this Russia and fake news thing is hysteria .Its politically moviated rather than anything that is trying to find the truth.

Actually the article is calling on Trump to arrest whistleblowers in the intelligence community who are using classified information to undermine his presidency.

So, like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, then.

It's fascinating to see how all it takes is some clandestine chumminess with Russia to make some progressives "kind of" support the most unliked and unqualified Republican President in the history of ever.

This whole "why won't these haters just step aside and let the man govern?" thing is beyond bizarre.

The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews.

. . . .

The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election.

Specifically, Quigley said that, despite efforts by some to change direction, the focus of the probe remains discovering "the extent of Russian involvement in the election, whether there was collusion (with the Trump campaign), leaks, and how do we prevent this from happening again."

Under the rules, Quigley can't say what information has yet to be publicly disclosed. But using a legal analogy, the congressman said there is "plenty of reason to go to a grand jury. I've seen probable cause there was collusion."

"It's fascinating to see how all it takes is some clandestine chumminess with Russia to make some progressives "kind of" support the most unliked and unqualified Republican President in the history of ever.

This whole "why won't these haters just step aside and let the man govern?" thing is beyond bizarre."

It's not bizarre to expect that the person who won the election should govern. If you accept the election as legitimate. Which, and I'm sorry if this is a surprise, most Americans do.

The point Paul Craig Roberts makes about whisteblowers is not a progressive position and I don't share it. But it has some truth to it - whisteblowers serve the public interest when they release information IN the public interest. Which Snowden and Manning unquestionably did. There is much more room to debate if the leaks coming out about Trump's Russian connections before he was president are in the public interest. Certainly leaks that show he or his administration officals knowingly lying are in the public interest. But that's not all that's coming out.

SeekingApolitic: Looks like you are getting the treatment now. Soon they'll be asking "how the weather is in St. Petersburg?" and insinuating you like to provide oral services to Putin. I think you may be making a mistake in thinking that you will get a reasonable discussion on this here. But hope springs eternal. Anyhow, welcome aboard (or welcome back!).

Fact is the election happened and Trump won. The results of the election were tallied, he had the most electoral votes and so, by the rules of the contest known to all contestants when they entered the race, he won. Then he was sworn in. And now he's serving as president. Democracy in action, whoo hoo.

That Americans may (according to some polls) disapprove of his jon performance now does not make his election illegitimate. Fact is no one on CNN or anywhere else in democratic media land is saying that Russian interference caused Trump's victory and the election was illegitimate/needs a do-over.

Another fact: Job approval polls 3 months in are highly subject to change. I wonder if he'll get a bump for killing some evil Syrian baby-gassers.

I don't like to give advice. But in the interest of peaceful co-existance, here's some from me to you: Don't confuse analysis with approval. I don't think you have much of a grasp on why Trump is popular to his base, and why he is tolerable for politically uninvolved Americans. And we all need to understand this if we want to stop his agenda.

Josh it is not obvious that only you who can speak for the majority of Americans. You both cite polls as the basis for your ideas about the mind of the majority but you think you should advise people to accept your expertise at reading polls and just STFU.

Arrogance is wonderful to behold. Trudeau and Trump also have it in spades.

Josh it is not obvious that only you who can speak for the majority of Americans. You both cite polls as the basis for your ideas about the mind of the majority but you think you should advise people to accept your expertise at reading polls and just STFU.

Arrogance is wonderful to behold. Trudeau and Trump also have it in spades.

Never told anyone to STFU. I just challenge those making claims that aren't supported by the facts. Anyone is welcome to respond in kind.

So it seems that Putin doesn't really have much control over Trump. It appears that after a mere three months the puppetmasters that backed Hilary are back in complete control of the military and security systems. We can all breath a sigh of relieve as the old oligarchy regains control from the upstarts.

The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews.

. . . .

The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election.

It seems to me that if anyone had wanted to disrupt the American politicial system and damage the United States, creating a favourable situation for a competing power, then getting Trump elected would have been the most productive way to do it. Trump doesn't need to follow a plan made in Moscow, or to do anything in particular. He just needs to be himself. His character, the dynamics of American politics, and circumstances (the U.S. balance of payments problem, etc.) will do the rest.

But none of this means the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of KremlinGate is going away. In fact, we now know that it’s been underway for almost a year. According to a new report in TheNew York Times, John Brennan, the CIA director during President Obama’s second term, knew last summer that Kremlin interference in our election was a serious and fast-growing problem. He was so worried that, in late August, Brennan personally briefed eight senior members of Congress on new evidence of Russia’s meddling—in some cases, the CIA director interrupted their summer vacations to share the bad news.

The Times doesn’t indicate what that urgent new intelligence was, but members of the Intelligence Community with access to that evidence have told me there are several top-secret reports—mainly, but not exclusively, signals intelligence from NSA—demonstrating links between Team Trump and top Kremlin officials, hinting at collusion with Moscow during last year’s election. Although none of these reports individually is conclusive—there is no “smoking gun” as Beltway wonks like to say—taken together they lead to the disturbing finding that Trump’s campaign was in cahoots with Moscow to hurt Hillary Clinton. That the IC knew much of this last summer invites disturbing questions about the Obama administration’s puzzling inaction last fall, in the weeks leading to the election.

FBI director James Comey has tamped down expectations of any quick resolution of his Bureau’s investigation of KremlinGate. He is surely correct that this weighty matter is best addressed thoroughly and judiciously, not rashly. We need the facts—not assertions or unprovable claims from dodgy dossiers. The existence of top-secret evidence pointing to collusion between Team Trump and Team Putin means that investigators and prosecutors have red meat to work with, but that does not necessarily mean that indictments are coming soon.

One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and Russian agents of influence relating to the use of hacked material.”